It cost €30 million in property purchases and building costs, and seven years of protracted planning wrangles, from concept to completion with each handmade red brick meeting the brief set by Limerick billionaire JP McManus for internationally renowned architect Niall McLaughlin.
That brief was to create a landmark building to celebrate Limerick’s long rugby tradition and to draw visitors to the city centre.
Despite warnings that the venture might not be commercially viable without significantly higher visitor numbers than projected, McManus proceeded, prepared to shoulder years of annual losses of up to €500,000, in the belief the project would have wider economic benefit to his native city.
The six-storey International Rugby Experience (IRE) opened in May 2023, promoted by Ireland and Munster rugby legends Paul O’Connell and Keith Wood. The property housing the tourist attraction was named as Ireland’s favourite building in the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland Public Choice Award that same year.
READ MORE
Some 60,000 visitors from 31 countries passed through its doors in the first 12 months, contributing €7.8 million to the local economy.
Now the building lies empty, shuttered since December 23rd, 2024 – a monument, in the eyes of some, to a billionaire’s folly. To others, its failure is testament to intractable local politics that have hampered Limerick’s economic progress for decades.
Nobody doubted McManus’s good intentions, especially when he offered to gift the €30 million building – debt free – to Limerick City and County Council, and sign a cheque for €1.2 million up front to cover most of the annual €500,000 losses until the end of 2027.
From 2028 onwards, McManus (74) told the council, they could use the building for whatever civic purpose they desired. There was only one catch: the council would not be allowed to sell the building or mortgage it.
Last October, the council declined the gift. IRE responded by closing the business two days before Christmas. At that stage, just 18 of its original 50 workers were still employed there.
Now, the work of art is in danger of becoming – in the words of local Fianna Fáil TD Willie O’Dea – “a white elephant”, an unwanted gift that requires excessive upkeep costs.
[ JP McManus’s International Rugby Experience closes after only a yearOpens in new window ]
At what was said to be an emotionally charged private meeting with Limerick City and County Council on June 26th last, McManus sought answers from the local authority about why they had turned down his offer when an agreement had been reached in principle only for the deal to fall at the 11th-hour.
The closed-doors meeting was organised as an attempt at reconciliation between the billionaire and the council.
Pat Daly, the director general of the council, apologised to McManus, as did every councillor who spoke.
Even though eight months had passed since the council rejected his €30 million gift, the humiliation still rankled with McManus. He spoke from a pre-prepared script and broke down in tears as he told councillors how proud he was when awarded the freedom of the city in 2001.
At issue for McManus was how his multi-million-euro gift was presented to the council and how “hurt” he was at the suggestion that the handover of the building might be an attempt to pass on losses to the people of Limerick. The tax exile, who is domiciled in Geneva, has donated more than €140 million to charitable causes through the JP McManus Benevolent Fund.
The only senior elected figure not represented at the meeting was John Moran, Limerick’s first directly elected mayor who was on a pre-scheduled trip abroad.
Relations between McManus and Moran, who – before his political career – advised the businessman on some of his investments between 2016 and 2018, have soured significantly in recent years, with McManus said to be furious at the Limerick mayor over his response to the offer of the IRE building.
The decline in relations comes against the backdrop of a hard-fought election last year when McManus backed one of Moran’s rivals in the Limerick mayoral race, Helen O’Donnell, an Independent candidate whose late husband was a Fine Gael TD. A member of the board of the JP McManus Benevolent Fund, O’Donnell finished second behind Moran in the election. Moran took office in June 2024.
Moran had said that he had meetings with McManus and hoped for “further open and constructive dialogue” to find a sustainable solution to secure the future of the IRE up to the end of 2027 and find an alternative civic use for the building thereafter.
But one source familiar with contacts between the men said there was “little relationship” between them and that it was “close to irreparable”.
The Irish Times sought comment from both McManus and Moran. The businessman’s office said on his behalf: “Mr McManus has no comment.” A spokesman for Moran said he had no comment to make. The council also declined to comment on a series of queries from The Irish Times.
While all sides in this dispute have agreed not to comment publicly on the claims and counterclaims about the financial details around the gifting of the building – and its cost implications for the public purse – sources on both sides have queried how the figures have been presented by the other.
The estimated annual losses that would be incurred keeping the IRE or an alternative tourism or civic venture open are at the centre of the dispute, with a source close to the Moran camp claiming that the IRE was facing much higher losses than anticipated.
The mayor believed the gift from McManus could end up costing the council millions in the future – a risk exacerbated by the condition of the gift; that the council could never sell or mortgage the building.
Moran recruited Shannon International Development Consultants to examine McManus’s gift and any future cost implications for the council. As elected mayor, Moran has an executive responsibility to oversee how Limerick City and County Council’s budget is allocated.
Moran (59) has experience in oversight of financial matters; he was previously secretary general of the Department of Finance, served as chair of the Land Development Agency and was a board member of the European Investment Bank. He has worked in law, banking and politics, owns Georgian properties in Limerick, and properties in New York and France.
After becoming mayor, he was prepared to delay the agreement with McManus, even if that meant trampling on the toes of one of Ireland’s most powerful businessmen.
When the consultants returned with their “draft final proposals” dated August 23rd, 2024, they projected losses in 2024 of €680,000 – some €180,000 more than IRE’s figure. Visitor numbers had declined since 2023, they said, and IRE would need to attract 70,000 to 80,000 visitors to break even.
They predicted losses that would require “operating direct financial subvention in the short to medium term at least – three to five years and beyond”.
Despite the increased projected losses, the council, McManus and the chief executive of IRE, Barry Hannon, appeared to be on track to reach an agreement.
They agreed in principle that McManus’s upfront cheque of €1.2 million would cover most of the losses for three years, with the council proposing to make savings that would cover €100,000 of the losses per year. The council had taken ownership of other major tourism projects, such as King John’s Castle, in the past, incorporating them into Discover Limerick DAC, a council-owned tourism company. It was proposed to do the same with the rugby tourism experience.
The council hoped to secure Government funding to make up any deficit. The proposal was brought to the councillors for a vote on October 29th, 2024.
The dispute between the McManus and Moran camps centres on what additional costs the council could face, with sources close to the McManus side maintaining that potential additional costs were only raised as an issue late in the process, shortly before a meeting with the council in October.
The presentation by the Shannon consultants on the “financial implications” for the council presented at the October 29th meeting show that the gift could potentially expose the council to an additional €4.8 million in costs.
However, sources backing Moran’s position in the dispute claim it could potentially leave the council on the hook for a higher sum: €6.3 million, of which only €1.2 million was being covered by McManus.
There was also an issue raised late in the day that the building housing the rugby tourism experience had an asset value of just €5.53 million.
Purchasing buildings, demolishing them, and building the rugby tourism experience on the corner site on O’Connell Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, had cost McManus €30 million, but in Moran’s view, the building was only worth about a sixth of that.
Sources backing McManus claim that these costs – and the reduced asset value – were only added shortly before the October meeting and that the proposal to gift the building was doomed to fail in light of these additional figures.
“The councillors when presented with this had no choice but to reject JP’s gift,” said a source supportive of the businessman’s plan.
The source said McManus was “deeply hurt” by the suggested perception that he might have been trying to offload a loss-making venture on to the council.
One source supportive of Moran’s position dismissed the timing of these late concerns being raised.
“The figures are what’s important,” said the source.
The Moran camp pointed out that the mayor offered to divert €100,000 annually from the mayor’s €40 million budget towards keeping the IRE open and that they intended to apply for €3 million in Government support to repurpose the facility for another tourism or civic purpose.
Efforts are being made to break the logjam.
McManus is understood to be willing to work with the council to find a solution, but nothing will happen until September at least when JP McManus, his family, Paul O’Connell and Hannon, the IRE chief executive, will meet in McManus’s five-star Adare Manor, the 2027 venue for the Ryder Cup competition between EU and US golfers, to discuss what to do with the O’Connell Street venue.
“That building is like the Mona Lisa,” one of McManus’s supporters said. “Some people love it and some people hate it.
“But one thing’s for sure: it will be there long after all of us are forgotten.”
